Geography: East Midlands, Leicestershire. The Rutland council area and part of the Melton and Harborough council areas.

Main population centres: Uppingham, Oakham, Melton Mowbray.

Profile: Rutland is the smallest county in England, entinguished in the 1974 local government reorganisation before re-emerging as a unitary council in the 1994 re-organisation. Its population is too low to form a seat in its own right and it is linked with parts of Leicestershire. Rutland itself is sparsely populated with only two significant towns, the market town of Uppingham and the county town of Oakham, set to the West of Rutland Water, a large man made reservoir. The largest settlement in the constituency is the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, well known for food manufacturing, especially the eponymous pork pie.

Politics: Rutland and Melton is a safe Conservative seat. Along with its predecessors it has consistently returned Conservative MPs since the mid nineteenth century.

Current MP

ALAN DUNCAN (Conservative) Born 1957, Rickmansworth. Educated at Merchant Taylors School and Oxford University. Former oil trader. Contested Barnsley West and Penistone 1987. First elected as MP for Rutland and Melton in 1992. PPS to Brian Mawhinney 1993-1994, 1995-1997. Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs 2003-2004, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development 2004-2005, Shadow Transport Secretary 2005, Shadow Business Secretary 2005-2009, Shadow Leader of the House 2009, Shadow prisons minister 2009-2010. Minister of State for International Development 2010-2014. Alan Duncan is a diminutative figure on the liberal wing of the party, and one of the first Conservative MPs to come out as gay in 1992. He was forced to resign as a PPS in 1994 after it was revealed he had lent money to a neighbour to buy their council house and subsequently bought it from them. He was a university friend of WIlliam Hague and was a key lieutenant in Hague`s 1997 leadership election, afterwards serving as Hague`s first press chief. He announced his intention to contest the 2005 Conservative leadership election but later withdrew his name.

Just trying to make the general point that UKIP support does not just come from ‘WWC voters’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) as some people like Tim Jones appear to think.

The large majority of UKIP support comes from former/potential tory voters (but I do concede they get a disproportionately large no. of 97-05 Labour votes in places like Gt Yarmouth, Eastleigh, Boston, Rotherham etc.)

Alan Duncan seems to have underperformed here. Though he does seem to annoy people he meets apparently. His ego is the sort of thing that creates a negative incumbancy effect. Chris Grayling and Austin Mitchell I’ve had the misfortune to meet also.

Coincidently, Lancs Observer, your above comment is in a similar vein to one you posted back in November that I’ve just referred to over in the Broxtowe thread. I find your notion that some MPs can suffer from a “negative incumbency bonus” difficult to lend credence to. Looked at over an extended period of time over a large number of constituencies the level of incumbency bonus enjoyed by MPs tends to be pretty constant, with any variation due to the party the incumbent represents.

It cannot be proved that an MP such as Austin Mitchell that performs badly in a reelection attempt has suffered from a “negative incumbency effect”. It is impossible for us to analyse the counter factual situation in which the constituency in question was defended by the same party but with a different candidate.

It’s certainly true if they either fail to hold surgeries (Bob Wareing, Lpool West Derby) or hold them and annoy those they meet (Chris Grayling as reported in the local press). Although his gaffes just before the General may have contributed to the fall in both his % and majority. I agree some are marmite figures such as Gerald Kaufman and Hazel Blears and can be disliked but still great at casework.

That’s all just supposition. There is no clear evidence of a connection between how good a caseworker an MP is (or to put it more accurately how good their office is at casework) and the level of incumbency bonus they enjoy. The percentage of the electorate who have even the slightest awareness of the type or extent of the work an MP does in the constituency must be tiny.

My theory is that incumbency bonus is something that more or less just falls into an incumbent member’s lap, almost irrespective of the type of MP they are. What variation there is comes about as a result of the popular image of the party they represent.

Polling shows that when asked which party they would “never” consider voting for of the three main parties the greatest number of voters name the Conservatives. Labour come next with the Lib Dems some way further back. Given those figure it is in my view entirely predictable that Labour MPs enjoy a larger incumbency bonus than Conservative MPs, and that Lib Dem MPs enjoy one greater still. MPs from parties that repel fewer voters get a larger incumbency bonus.

Keiran W – I agree with your second sentence, because that is not my supposition, it is yours. I’m referring to the exception. Perhaps the 5% of MPs who held no surgeries in the ’90s and maybe less now. Bob Wareing was a good example as he didn’t even have a constituency office from 1983-2000. [He finally opened one, after shedding 15,000 votes, being deselected and contributing to the loss of 4 Labour wards in his seat]. His overseas’ jaunts on expenses and failure to reply to constituents’ letters was well known and publicised. I agree that people who never contact their MP will not know how in/effective they are.

We live in a village within the Melton & Rutland constituency (along with around 700 other people). We are probably around 5 miles from the “border” with the Rushcliffe vote. In comedy fashion, I returned home from work last week to a “Vote David Mellen” flyer, with all the reasons why the guy was the right person for Rushcliffe and principally West Bridgford. As, it turns out, did much of the village. The bloke doesn’t even know who’s vote he is seeking! Any guesses as to which party he represents……..yes, you got it……the shambles that is Labour!

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